It seems Royal Challengers are taking a leaf out of the viral marketeers worldwide. Narasimha Suresh, founder & CEO of TeliBrahma, presented a case study on creating hype & engagement among the people for Royal Challengers, using Bluetooth. The basic idea behind it was to distribute sponsored content among the visitors of an IT Park in Bengaluru. This helped them to spread awareness and also allowed people to talk about the team.

Normal range of Bluetooth is 15 metres. Hence, TeliBrahma decided to cinjure up a larger bluetooth zone, called BluZone, at an IT park and 7 different colleges. Everyone within the BluZone had been asked to switch their Bluetooth on so that the firm could distribute IPL related content to every bluetooth enabled mobile, all throughout the events. A networking application had been offered for download, which enabled users to interact and exchange content with each other in the BluZone. Even during the IPL matches in the Chinnaswami Stadium in Bangalore, the whole stadium was converted into a BluZone. “When people watch cricket matches on TV, they get a lot of additional information and analysis. But they miss this when they watch a match in a cricket stadium. We wanted to extend the TV experience of a cricket match in a real-time scenario by providing the information and analysis to the audience present in the stadium,” said Suresh. This is a great wayof advertising and collecting up the costs incurred, in the process helping the audiences stay in touch with the progress of the match, ball by ball. Various other messages were also sent out to users, inviting them to contests and events sponsored by Britannia & Blackberry.

This is a win-win situation since both the transmitter and the receiver get benefitted off it. Reminds me of some free sms services on the internet that allow sending free sms-esby appending some advertisements at the end of every message. I personally feel that in this particular case of Royal Challengers, every each person in the stadium is definitely a cricket fan. So, ifthe organizers decide to pass on advertisements that are related to cricket, they shall be targetting a very focussed audience and also the audiences should not find the ads too much out of context.

The day has finally come for the mobile phones to be the ultimate target of advertisers in terms of seeking attention. I think it’s high time that even the stores and restaurants should take up this facility to inform mobile users nearby about their services and also help them navigate, in the process.

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